Ousmane Sembene's hall of men: (en)gendering everyday heroism

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Periodical article

Title:	Ousmane Sembene's hall of men: (en)gendering everyday heroism
Author:	Lindo, Karen
Year:	2010
Periodical:	Research in African Literatures (ISSN 0034-5210)
Volume:	41
Issue:	4
Pages:	109-124
Language:	English
Geographic term:	Senegal
Subjects:	films gender
About person:	Sembène Ousmane (1923-2007)
External link:	http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/research_in_african_literatures/v041/41.4.lindo.pdf
Abstract:	'Faat Kiné' (2000) and 'Moolaade' (2004) have together generated remarkable critical attention with regard to the place of women in Senegalese filmmaker Ousmane Sembene's filmography. While numerous film critics and theorists see Sembene as a veritable torchbearer for African feminism, they have not sufficiently attended to the role men play in these final films. In order to contribute a more comprehensive feminist interpretation of these films, in this article the author exposes the complex web of power relations in which women's issues are embedded and show how the patriarchal grip risks thwarting plural expressions of both femininity and masculinity. She further demonstrates how female characters and their issues in 'Faat Kiné' and 'Moolaade' enable Sembene to unveil male characters that lay claim to novel paradigms of masculinities, no longer shackled to the colonial narrative of the past but rather anchored in the practice of their material experience of the everyday. Bibliogr., notes, ref., sum. [Journal abstract]